Bugatti Type 54 Bachelier Roadster

The beautiful, elegant lines of this Bugatti suggest that it is just an ordinary roadster, but underneath it is actually a Type 54 Grand Prix racer with a five liter supercharged engine producing 300 hp.

The beautiful, elegant lines of this Bugatti suggest that it is an ordinary roadster, but underneath it is in fact a Type 54 Grand Prix racer with a five liter supercharged engine producing 300 hp. In 1932 the English aristocrat and racing driver Earl Howe buys a Type 54 and drives it in the French Grand Prix. He drops out with a broken gearbox, is dissatisfied with the car anyway, and sells it to the English Bugatti enthusiast L.G. "Batch" Bachelier. In his workshop in southwest London, Bachelier builds a roadster body on the Type 54 chassis. His own roadster, a Type 55, serves as an example. However, Bachelier is seriously ill and dies just before the car is finished. After that, this Bugatti Type 54 Bachelier Roadster has several owners. The car crashes in a race in the late 1940s and is repaired incorrectly. In 1986 the car gets a new owner, who manages to track down the original Bachelier bodywork and restores this unique Bugatti correctly. In 2001 this car wins the Briggs Cunningham Trophy for the most elegant pre war sports car at the Pebble Beach concours in California. The Bugatti Type 54 is a difficult car to drive. Only five Type 54s are built; two of them are irreparably damaged in crashes in which the drivers Lobkowitz and Count Stanislaus Czaykowski lose their lives. The latter held the one hour world record in his Type 54, at 213.8 km/h.